Mill Village Gallery in Five Points offer art that's functional

View full sizeDave Dieter / The Huntsville TimesMill Village Gallery in Five Points offers art you can use. The store is owned by Eugene and Linda Worley. HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Drink from the cups, eat off the plates or put flowers in the vases. At Mill Village Gallery in Five Points, all of the art is functional.

"We wanted to have art you could use," said Eugene Worley, 70, who owns the shop with his wife, Linda, 65. "It's just a special thing to pick up something man-made, not machine-made."

Housed in a 103-year-old former church at the corner of Humes Avenue and Dement Street, Mill Village Gallery carries handmade, affordable pieces of locally made art - especially pottery.

"I wanted to help the local folks out," Eugene Worley said on a recent Friday afternoon.

A potter himself, Worley wanted to give fellow artisans a place to sell their wares.

All of the items sold at Mill Village Gallery come from artists who live within 100 miles of Huntsville, or as Worley says, "easy driving distance."

The store also carries fair-trade items (sales benefit the artist, not the merchant), handmade quilts and reclaimed furniture.

View full sizeDave Dieter / The Huntsville TimesMill Village Gallery, pictured, is located in Five Points at Humes Avenue and Dement Street. In old building

Champions of historic preservation, the Worleys, who also live in Five Points, bought the old church in 2009. They hoped to live in the building or lease it to another church. Neither plan worked out.

The couple opened Mill Village Gallery in November.

"We believe Huntsville needed it," Worley said.

The white building, with red doors and a bottle tree out front, sits next door to the Worleys' other store, the quilting shop Patches and Stitches.